Guild Wars 2

Watched lots of videos and been playing this class as a main for a couple of months.
But I have gotten to a plateau.

I’m running a classic 30 (forceful, incendiary, grenadier) 10 (switch it up for range or pistol duration), 0, 20 (vigor and BR) and 10 (speedy kits) build.

Using pistol and shield mostly but on occasion an offhand pistol.
Also using rabid gear. Food is +cond and +cond damage
Sigils are torment and bursting (swap out for stacks).

Ok, winning as many as I lose if not winning a few more. Effective yes but not as good as I want to be.

Issues:

1) In a lull on what I might change and when. The build is solid but I run it non-stop. Small changes are better than big ones.

2) Struggling with grenades when I have to move and the opponent is moving. I land half. If I am lucky 2/3rds. I bought a new gaming mouse with buttons galore, practiced and practiced more and still stuck at about 1/2. So I move to bombs and pistols far more than I think I would like to.

3) I get rotations but struggle to maximize which to use first on classes I am less familiar with.

4) I’m not burning down enemies quickly with conditions but if I live long enough I generally win because of conditions.

5) My healing is great up to the point the fight goes long. Then I start to be on all cooldowns and that is when I find myself getting hurt with immobilizes and damage spikes and go down.

6) Can I get more burst upfront or do I even need it?

7) How do you deal with condition transfer from necromancers? They eat me up.

8) I have a good sense of combos but getting the long duration ones is a lot harder to do in a battle than preparing for a battle. I still don’t seem to get how to maximize stealth when I am in an “holy smokes” situation and really could use it to get away.

9) Shield looks amazing in videos but my experience has been very meh. The block is short. The retaliation requires I sit and wait. The blast is about all I seem to be able to count on being really useful. Seems the off hand pistol just gives me more of what I have but a bit better (longer burn and glue at range).

10) I need to keep players stuck better. E gun bouncing glue isn’t locking them up. Supply crate does amazing things if the stupid net turrets don’t fire off at a pet. And I wonder if I should start taking more traits to cripple and immobilize like sitting duck.

11) When I play shrapenal in pvp I certainly see bigger bleed stacks but then I wonder if bombs are even worth it at 180. I just can’t quite tell practically how valuable forceful explosions is. It seems critical but then you see it is only 60 units. I wonder if anyone makes bombs work well without it.

So, I just need a bit of good old fashion advice on these topics and any other advice you all had when you started to plateau with your condi engineer.

Thanks in advance.

1) I run a setup that is pretty similar to yours. I run 30/10/0/20/10 aswell but with dire gear instead.

2) Don’t expect to hit people with your grenades at 1200 range. They either strave or dodge them. I use my nades at close to medium range instead

3) Sounds like a l2p issue to me. Asking other roamer for duels can help.

4) having a burst combo helps. for example my combo is: Pull —> prybar —> rocketkick —> shrapnel grenade that should load up your enemy with loads of conditions.

5) I hope you run healing turret. It is the best healing skill for the setup you run. learning how to blast your waterfields helps aswell. (you can get 2 blasts in the waterfield of the toolbelt skill etc.) Also gaining some distance to your enemy helps. I run rocketboots over EG for this reason.

6) If you want more damage give perplex runes a shot. They are not really liked and a bit OP in 1v1 scenarios but I think it is a great way to learn the class and how to use your interrupts.

7) Condi transfers are really, really, really, really painful. Not loading them up with too many conditions at once helps. You can allways do that after they used their transfer ability.

8) With your setup it think the longest stealth you can get is: BoB —> smoke bomb —> healing turret —> blast healing turret —> shield #4 —> EG #4. Maybe you can get a supply crate in there aswell. I haven’t tried it. Be carefull not to use BoB to stealth up when there are enemies around. It will give you the revealed debuff.

9) I love the shield abilities on engi. the blast is really strong and also a knockback. But you are right. I rarely use it as a means to reflect projectiles. I only use it really in a 1v1 with killshot warriors, which are pretty easy to beat anyway. Shield #5 is the ultimate thief killer. Also when you throw it, it is a 100% projectile finisher. Once you get the hang of it shield #5 is super strong.

10) sounds like a bombkit issue to me. Try using line of sight to make them come to you instead of the other way around. Watching videos of Koroshi and Wolfineer might help too.

11) Running forceful explosions is vital for a succesful use of the bombkit imo. Especially if you have trouble hitting people with your bombs. Believe me: 5 stacks of confusion are way more rewarding than some extra bleeds.

(I run: healing turret / rocketboots / grenade kit / toolkit / supply crate
my sigils are: bursting and torment/ runes: 4x Perplexity and 2x Lyssa or 6x Perplexity)

If you’re finding shield underwhelming and also want more burst, switch to rifle. You’ll lose the pistol #2 & #3 conditions, but you’ll get hard-hitting jumpshot (leap finisher) and blunderbuss. Also, net shot on a low cooldown gives you a reliable immob. And you’ll get an interrupt with #4 to work with your Perplexity runes, albeit not as good as shield’s it’s on a lower CD.